Related papers: Critic Sequential Monte Carlo
When evaluating the impact of a policy on a metric of interest, it may not be possible to conduct a randomized control trial. In settings where only observational data is available, Synthetic Control (SC) methods provide a popular…
A key limitation of sampling algorithms for approximate inference is that it is difficult to quantify their approximation error. Widely used sampling schemes, such as sequential importance sampling with resampling and Metropolis-Hastings,…
Bayesian phylogenetic inference is often conducted via local or sequential search over topologies and branch lengths using algorithms such as random-walk Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or Combinatorial Sequential Monte Carlo (CSMC).…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods represent a classical set of techniques to simulate a sequence of probability measures through a simple selection/mutation mechanism. However, the associated selection functions and mutation kernels…
Reinforcement learning (RL) and model predictive control (MPC) offer complementary strengths, yet combining them at scale remains computationally challenging. We propose soft MPCritic, an RL-MPC framework that learns in (soft) value space…
We propose a hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) technique applicable to high-dimensional multivariate normal distributions that effectively samples along chaotic trajectories. The method is predicated on the freedom of choice of the HMC momentum…
We show how to speed up Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) for Bayesian inference in large data problems by data subsampling. SMC sequentially updates a cloud of particles through a sequence of distributions, beginning with a distribution that is…
We introduce and analyze a parallel sequential Monte Carlo methodology for the numerical solution of optimization problems that involve the minimization of a cost function that consists of the sum of many individual components. The proposed…
Navigating complex urban environments safely is a key to realize fully autonomous systems. Predicting future locations of vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, thus, has received a lot of attention in the recent years.…
We propose a novel Continuation Multi Level Monte Carlo (CMLMC) algorithm for weak approximation of stochastic models. The CMLMC algorithm solves the given approximation problem for a sequence of decreasing tolerances, ending when the…
Approximate Bayesian computation methods can be used to evaluate posterior distributions without having to calculate likelihoods. In this paper we discuss and apply an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) method based on sequential Monte…
We investigate the application of randomized quasi-Monte Carlo (RQMC) methods in random feature approximations for kernel-based learning. Compared to the classical Monte Carlo (MC) approach \citep{rahimi2007random}, RQMC improves the…
We prove bounds on the variance of a function $f$ under the empirical measure of the samples obtained by the Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithm, with time complexity depending on local rather than global Markov chain mixing dynamics.…
We discuss Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and event-chain Monte Carlo (ECMC) for the one-dimensional chain of particles with harmonic interactions and benchmark them against local reversible Metropolis algorithms. While HMC achieves…
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has emerged as a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to sample from complex continuous distributions. However, a fundamental limitation of HMC is that it can not be applied to distributions with…
Many machine learning problems involve Monte Carlo gradient estimators. As a prominent example, we focus on Monte Carlo variational inference (MCVI) in this paper. The performance of MCVI crucially depends on the variance of its stochastic…
State space models (SSM) have been widely applied for the analysis and visualization of large sequential datasets. Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) is a very popular particle-based method to sample latent states from intractable posteriors.…
The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm is a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method that uses Hamiltonian dynamics to generate samples from a target distribution. To fully exploit its potential, we must understand how…
Many practical applications of control require that constraints on the inputs and states of the system be respected, while optimizing some performance criterion. In the presence of model uncertainties or disturbances, for many control…
We introduce a new class of sequential Monte Carlo methods which reformulates the essence of the nested sampling method of Skilling (2006) in terms of sequential Monte Carlo techniques. Two new algorithms are proposed, nested sampling via…